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On duty these cats prowled in the temples, silent-footed and alert, like dark shadows of the night. If anyone tried to reach the jewels, which were otherwise unguarded, a cat would emerge and leap at the man's arm. Unless he let go immediately, another cat would jump, perhaps from the Holy Image, straight at the thief's throat. And those cats had claws twice as long as those of the “average” cat—and they did not let go. Dogs could be beaten off, or perhaps held or poisoned. Not so with the cats. They would put the fiercest mastiffs to flight. Only men who personally knew those cats could approach them when they were on duty.

We sauntered on. Down at the road we turned right through the Pargo Kaling and walked on past the village of Sho. On over the turquoise Bridge and right again at the House of Doring. This brought us to the side of the old Chinese Mission. As we walked the Lama Mingyar Dondup talked to me. “A Chinese Mission has arrived, as I told you. Let us have a look at them and see what they are like.”

My first impression was a very unfavourable one. Inside the house the men were pacing about arrogantly unpacking boxes and cases. They appeared to have enough weapons to supply a small army. Being a small boy, I could “investigate” in a manner which was quite unsuitable for an older person. I crept through the grounds and silently approached an open window. For a time I stood and watched until one of the men looked up and saw me. He uttered a Chinese oath which threw grave doubts upon my ancestry, but left none whatever about my future. He reached for something, so I withdrew before he could throw it.

On the Lingkhor road again, I said to my Guide: “Oh! How their auras turned red! And they wave knives about so.”

For the rest of the way home the Lama Mingyar Dondup was thoughtful. After our supper he said to me: “I have been thinking quite a lot about these Chinese. I am going to suggest to

the Precious One that we make use of your special abilities. Do you feel confident that you can watch them through a screen if it can

be arranged?”

All I could say was: “If you think I can do it, then I can.” The next day I did not see my Guide at all, but the following

day he taught me in the morning and after the midday meal said: “We will take a walk this afternoon, Lobsang. Here is a scarf of the first quality, so you do not need to be a clairvoyant to know where we are going. Ten minutes to get yourself ready and then meet me in my room. I have to go and see the Abbot first.”

Once again we set off on the precipitous path down the mountain-side. We took a short cut down over the south-west

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side of our mountain and, after a very short walk, arrived at the Norbu Linga. The Dalai Lama was very fond of this Jewel Park and spent most of his free time there. The Potala was a beautiful place, outside, but inside it was stuffy through insufficient ventilation and too many butter-lamps burning for too long. Much butter had been spilled on the floors throughout the years, and it was not a new experience for a dignified lama to pursue his stately way down a sloping ramp, tread on a lump of butter covered in dust, and arrive at the bottom of the ramp with an “Ulp!” of astonishment, as part of his anatomy hit the stone flooring. The Dalai Lama did not wish to risk being the subject of such an unedifying spectacle, so he stayed at the Norbu Linga whenever possible.

This Jewel Park was surrounded by a stone wall some twelve feet high. The Park is only about a hundred years old. The Palace within had golden turrets and consisted of three buildings which were used for official and state work. An Inner Enclosure, which also had a high wall, was used by the Dalai Lama as a pleasure garden. Some people have written that officials were forbidden to enter this enclosure. That definitely is not so. They were forbidden to do any official business within the enclosure. I have been there some thirty times and know it well. It contained a very beautiful artificial lake with two islands, upon which there were two summerhouses. At the north-west corner a wide stone causeway enabled one to reach the islands and the summer-house on each. The Dalai Lama spent much time on one or other of these islands and spent many hours each day in meditation there. Inside the Park there were barracks which housed some five hundred men who acted as personal bodyguards. It was to this place that the Lama Mingyar

Dondup was taking me. This was my first visit. We walked through the very beautiful land and through an ornamental gateway leading to the Inner Enclosure. All manner of birds were pecking food from the ground as we entered, and they took no notice of us, we had to get out of their way! The lake was placid, like a highly polished metal mirror. The stone causeway had been newly whitewashed, and we made our way to the farthest island where the Inmost One was sitting in deep meditation. At our approach he looked up and smiled. We knelt and laid our scarves at his feet

and he told us to sit in front of him. He rang a bell for the buttered tea without which no Tibetan could carry out a discussion. While we were waiting for it to be brought, he told me of the various animals he had in the Park and promised that I should see them later.

With the arrival of the tea and the departure of the lama atten-

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know what they were called, I know only that they were a very welcome change from tea, tsampa, and turnip. Well fortified, I was able to face the prospect of several hours' immobility more cheerfully. Utter immobility was a simple matter to me, and to all lamas: we had to keep still in order to meditate. From a very early age, from seven years of age to be precise, I had been taught to sit motionless for hours on end. A lighted butter-lamp used to be balanced on my head and I had to remain in the lotus attitude

until the butter was finished. This could be as long as twelve hours. So now, three or four hours imposed no hardship.

Directly in front of me the Dalai Lama sat in the lotus attitude on his throne six feet above the floor. He, and I, remained motionless. From without the walls came hoarse cries, and many exclamations in Chinese. Afterwards I discovered that the Chinese had had suspicious bulges under their robes, and so had been searched for weapons. Now they were permitted to enter the Inner Enclosure. We saw them coming, being led in by the Household Guards, across the causeway and on to the porch of the Pavilion. A high lama intoned: “O! Ma-ni pad-me Hum,” and the Chinamen, instead of repeating the same mantra as a courtesy, used the Chinese form: “O-mi-t'o-fo” (meaning: “Hear us, O Amida Buddha!”).

I thought to myself: “Well, Lobsang, your work is easy; they show their true colours.”

As I looked at them from my place of concealment I observed the shimmering of their auras, the opalescent sheen, shot with murky red. The turgid swirling of hate-filled thoughts. Bands and striations of colour, unpleasant colours, not the clear, pure shades of higher thought, but the unwholesome, contaminated hues of those whose life forces are devoted to materialism and evil-doing. They were those of whom we say: “Their speech was fair but their thoughts were foul.”

I also watched the Dalai Lama. His colours indicated sadness, sadness as he remembered the past when he had been to China. All that I saw of the Inmost One I liked, the best Ruler ever of Tibet. He had a temper, quite a hot one, and then his colours did flash red; but history will record that there never was a better Dalai Lama, one who was utterly devoted to his country. Certainly I thought of him with very great affection, second only to the Lama Mingyar Dondup for whom I felt more than affection.

But the interview dragged on to its useless end, useless because these men did not come in friendship, but in enmity. Their one thought was to get their own way and not be too particular about the methods they employed. They wanted territories, they wanted

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foolish, having no scarf to present, and not knowing how to behave without it. The Inmost One looked up with a smile: “Oh! Sit down, Mingyar, and you, too, Lobsang. You have certainly hurried.”

We sat down and waited for him to speak. He meditated for some time, seeming to marshal his thoughts in an orderly array. “Some time ago,” he said, “the army of the Red Barbarians (the British) invaded our sacred land. I went to India and from thence traveled most extensively. In the Year of the Iron Dog (1910) the Chinese invaded us as a direct result of the British in-

vasion. I again went to India and there I met the man whom we are to meet today. I say all this for you, Lobsang, for Mingyar was with me. The British made promises and they were not kept. Now I want to know if this man speaks with one or two tongues. You, Lobsang, will not understand his speech and so will not be influenced by it. From this lattice screen you and another will watch unobserved, your presence will not be known. You will write down your astral-colour impressions as taught by our Guide, who speaks so well of you. Now show him to his place, Mingyar, for he is more used to you than to me and—I do believe—he considers the Lama Mingyar Dondup to be superior to the Dalai Lama!”

Behind the lattice screen I had grown tired of looking about. Tired of watching the birds and the waving of the branches of the trees. Now and then I took surreptitious nibbles at some tsampa which I had with me. Clouds drifted across the sky, and I thought how nice it would be to feel the sway and tremor of a kite beneath me, with the rushing wind whistling through the fabric and thrumming on the rope. Suddenly I jumped as there was a crash. For a moment I thought that I was in a kite, and had fallen asleep and out! But no, the gate to the Inner Garden had been flung open, and golden-robed lamas of the Household escorted in a most extraordinary sight. I was hard put to keep silent; I wanted to explode with laughter. A man, a tall, thin man. White hair, white face, scanty eyebrows, and deep-sunk eyes. Quite a hard mouth. But his dress! Blue cloth of some sort with a whole row of knobs down the front, shiny knobs. Apparently some very bad tailor had made the clothes, for the collar was so big that it had to be folded over. It was folded over certain patches on the sides, too. I thought that the Westerners must have some symbolic patches; such as those we used in imitation of Buddha. Pockets meant nothing to me in those days, nor did folded collars. In Tibet, those who have no need to do manual work have long sleeves which completely hide the hands. This man had short sleeves, reaching only to his wrists. “Yet he cannot be a labourer,” I thought, “for

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his hands look too soft. Perhaps he does not know how to dress.” But this fellow's robe ended where his legs joined his body. “Poor very poor,” I thought. His trousers were too tight in the leg and too long, for the bottoms were turned up. “He must feel terrible looking like that in front of the Inmost One,” I thought. “I wonder if someone his size will lend him proper clothes.” Then I looked at his feet. Very, very strange. He had some curious black things on them. Shiny things, shiny as if they were covered with ice. Not boots of felt such as we wear, no, I decided that I would never see anything stranger than this. Quite automatically I was writing down the colours, I saw, and making notes of my own interpretation of them. Sometimes the man spoke in Tibetan, quite good for a foreigner, then lapsed into the most remarkable collection of sounds I had ever heard. “English”, as they told me afterwards when I again saw the Dalai Lama.

The man amazed me by reaching into one of the patches at his side and bringing out a piece of white cloth. Before my astounded eyes he put this cloth over his mouth and nose and made it sound like a small trumpet. “Some sort of a salute to the Precious One,” I thought. Salute over, he carefully put away the cloth behind the patch. He fiddled about with other patches and brought out various papers of a type I had not seen before. White, thin, smooth paper. Not like ours which was buff, thick, and rough. “How can one possibly write on that?” I thought. “There is nothing to

scrape away the crayon, things would just slide off!” The man took from behind one of his patches a thin stick of painted wood with what looked like soot in the middle. With this he made the strangest squiggles I had ever imagined. I thought he could not write and was just pretending to by making these markings. “Soot? Who ever heard of anyone writing with a streak of soot. Just let him blow on it and see the soot fly off!”

He was obviously a cripple because he had to sit on a wooden framework which rested on four sticks. He sat down on the frame, and let his legs hang over the edge. I thought that his spine must have been damaged, because two more sticks from the frame on which he sat supported it. By now I was feeling really sorry for him: ill-fitting clothes, inability to write, showing off by blowing a trumpet from his pocket, and now, to make it even stranger, he could not sit properly but had to have his back supported and his legs dangling. He fidgeted a lot, crossing and uncrossing his legs. At one time, to my horror, he tipped the left foot so that the sole pointing at the Dalai Lama, a terrible insult if done by a

Tibetan, but he soon remembered and uncrossed his legs again. The Inmost One did great honour to this man, for he also sat on

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one of these wooden frames and let his legs hang over. The visitor had a most peculiar name, he was called “Female Musical Instrument”, and he had two decorations in front of it. Now I should refer to him as “C. A. Bell”. By his auric colours I judged him to be in poor health, most probably caused by living in a climate to which he was not suited. He appeared genuine in his desire to be helpful, but it was obvious from his colours that he was afraid of annoying his government and of having his after-work pension affected. He wanted to take one course, but his government was not willing, so he had to say one thing and hope that his opinions and suggestions would be proved correct by time.

We knew a lot about this Mr. Bell. We had all the data, his birth time, and various “highlights” in his career with which one could plot his course of events. The astrologers discovered that he had previously lived in Tibet and had, during his last life, expressed the wish to reincarnate in the West in the hope of assisting in an understanding between East and West. I have recently been given to understand that he mentions this in some book that he has written. Certainly we felt that if he had been able to influence his government in the way he desired there would have been no Communist invasion of my country. However, the forecasts decreed that there would be such an invasion, and the predictions are never wrong.

The English Government seemed to be very suspicious: they thought that Tibet was making treaties with Russia. This did not suit them. England would not make a treaty with Tibet, nor was she willing for Tibet to make friends with anyone else. Sikkin, Bhutan, anywhere but Tibet could have treaties, but not Tibet. So the English became hot under their peculiar collars in an attempt to invade us or strangle us—they did not mind which. This Mr. Bell, who was on the spot, saw that we had no desire to side with any nation; we wanted to stay on our own, to live life in our own way, and keep clear of all dealings with foreigners who, in the past, had brought us nothing but trouble, loss, and hardship.

The Inmost One was pleased indeed with my remarks after this Mr. Bell had left. But he thought of me in terms of more work “Yes, yes!” he exclaimed, “we must develop you even more, Lobsang. You will find it of the utmost use when you go to the Far Countries. We will have you given more hypnotic treatment, we must cram in all the knowledge that we can.” He reached for his bell and rang for one of his attendants. “Mingyar Dondup, I want him here, now!” he said. A few minutes later my Guide appeared and made his leisurely way across. Not for anyone would that Lama hurry! And the Dalai Lama knew him as a friend and

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